My Courses This Fall: Please Weigh In!

So as I recently mentioned, I am very excited about starting my ThM this fall, partly because of the great deal of freedom I have in choosing my courses over the next year. Of course, I forgot the ever-present reality of scheduling conflicts, which has somewhat muted my earlier enthusiasm. In particular, I have a tough choice to make between an indepth study of two major thinkers in the history of Christian theology. So, sounds like it’s time for a poll! If you vote, please comment, giving me your reasons why I should choose your preference. While it goes without saying that I reserve the right to subvert the final results, good feedback will be considered.

7 responses to “My Courses This Fall: Please Weigh In!”

I sympathize! Subvert away, but it’s like asking should I study Derrida or Nietzsche. Yes; but in what order? A solid grasp of both Luther and Augustine makes for a more formidable grasp of the issues in a wide variety of Reformation and post-Reformation churches. I don’t happen to believe in “spoilers,” and it’s never bothered me to work my way backwards through a sequence of thought, but there are also advantages to having the earlier theologian under your belt for understanding what the later one does with him.

Thanks for stopping by! The Augustine class will be working through primary texts (with one “summary” secondary text), with his understanding of Baptism providing a lens through which to explore other themes of his theology.

The Luther course is a more general course, with an emphasis on a few particular themes (use/understanding of scripture, theology of the cross, etc). About 50-50 ratio re primary & secondary texts.

There is more to the “Theology of Martin Luther” class to be sure, but the only syllabus available online is a few years old, so i hesitate to go into too much depth since he could’ve revamped the course since then.